Not so long ago, Ontario and Quebec ruled the roost in the Canadian henhouse. Now it takes the two of them to lay an egg.

OK, I exaggerate. But the once-cocksure provinces didn’t launch their new coalition with a lot of oomph last week, when Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne travelled to Quebec City to meet Philippe Couillard, her Quebec counterpart.

Couillard was hardly subtle in his comments about the new alliance. Quebec and Ontario “are back,” the Quebec premier said, “as a very important block of influence in the country.”

It’s a mark of the effectiveness of this new Ontario-Quebec block that this is the first time you’ve read about it. But before losing myself in skepticism, I should say that Wynne and Couillard are on to something here.

They have yet to rattle the foundations of the nation’s true economic powerhouse — the West. But they have belatedly recognized that the axis of political power has shifted to Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.

In short, the Central Canadian premiers know that it’s time to fight back. And the centrepiece of their dalliance with 21st-century realities smartly features energy — in the form of a vow to increase sales of Quebec hydroelectricity into Ontario.

Back home in the Maritimes, where Canada’s premiers met this week (in Charlottetown), we can resist fracking and new energy projects with all the zeal of a latter-day Joan of Arc, as long as we understand that our purity of spirit and nobility of mind are turning us into economic outcasts with an uncertain future.

Call me biased (I do consult in the energy sector), but I can’t resist reaching the obvious conclusion that Canada’s prosperous provinces — now including Newfoundland and Labrador — are thriving in large part due to the development of their natural resources. And citizens living therein are somehow managing to cope with the prosperity.

I’ll resist another obvious conclusion, however — namely, that political leaders in Atlantic Canada have let us down by not entering into the kind of coalition that has long united Canada’s three westernmost provinces, and that Couillard and Wynne are now trying to form.

An Atlantic Canada political “block” could be a beautiful thing in the new Canadian order, but it could only be achieved in the face of entrenched opposition to change. (To blame only politicians for this state of affairs is like blaming fish for the state of the oceans.)

On the far coast, meanwhile, British Columbia Premier Christy Clark will continue to gloat (as she did this week in Charlottetown) about something called the New West Partnership Trade Agreement. The deal with Alberta and Saskatchewan is supposed to boost the economy by, as Clark put it, knocking down “unnecessary barriers to trade.”

Clark and her colleagues in the West are also sending a message to Premier Stephen Harper, who has made a studious and stunningly successful effort to ignore the provinces over the past eight years. Premiers like Alberta’s Peter Lougheed once bestrode this country like colossi. Now, who among us can even name the premier of Alberta (David Hancock, I think) without first consulting the oracle at Google?

Harper’s pretty good at ignoring — and thereby marginalizing — the list of his least favourite things, which includes not only the premiers but also the CBC, medicare, the media and Australian-rules football. But he can’t ignore the Western coalition, and he knows it. Why else would his government promote transfer policies, for instance, that will send more health-care money to young and vigorous Alberta and less to aging and ailing Nova Scotia?

Ontario and Quebec are now trying to play in the great national game, as part of a team uniting Canada’s two largest “have not” provinces. Heck, in the new Canadian order, maybe we should join Ontario’s 21st-century team. The Maritime provinces have been divided and conquered long enough, and there’s no sense acting like it’s still 1867.